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Today's Opinions

In response to the Feb. 10 Columbine Courier article regarding issues between Foothills Park & Recreation District and the Mesa View Estates HOA, I would like to provide further detail. This is an extremely complex issue, and it is important the residents of our district are fully informed.

The 9-year-old chihuahua mix was sick, missing about half his teeth and hadn’t had a place to call home for more than a year. He was a hefty14 pounds — a bit much for a pooch his size, likely due to months of inactivity and a poor diet.

In 1989, I was working for the Rocky Mountain News, and times were good. Really good. Our circulation was soaring, and ad sales were humming along.

Fast-forward 20 years, and many things have changed. The Rocky has disappeared, and several other major dailies have followed that same path to extinction. Craigslist has drained away classified advertising. The current economic downturn is taking its toll. And of course readers are turning to the Internet for their news and away from print publications.

The Jeffco school board took serious actions on Jan. 14 related to managing school facility capacity. The district’s student population has steadied at about 80,000-plus kids, and students “choicing” in and out of neighborhood schools have affected the numbers of kids at different schools.

Ken Caryl Middle School was on the block at one point so Jeffco could fill more seats at Deer Creek Middle School. A walk-through of the Deer Creek facility showed insufficient library, gym and cafeteria space for the roughly 1,200 kids that would be in that building.

When members of Congress and Pentagon leaders realized we needed to close military bases around the country and find ways to use others better, they knew they would face impossible political dilemmas. Communities around the country would fight to keep their bases and missions. What politician with an ounce of self-preservation instinct would vote to close a base in his or her own district?

As the Colorado General Assembly returns to the Capitol for the 2010 legislative session, the state faces a $600 million budget shortfall in the current fiscal year and a $1.5 billion shortfall for the coming year. Though economists say the worst of the recession is behind us, they also say the recovery will be slow and it will take some time to recover the jobs we have lost.

Shortly after I started as the founding director of Denver’s Mayor’s Office of Regulatory Reform in 1991, Elbra Wedgeworth, the office’s deputy director, told me she wanted us to have breakfast with one of her Leadership Denver classmates from the district attorney’s office. Shortly thereafter, she and I met with Bill Ritter. From that day, the three of us went on to bigger and better things. Elbra became president of the City Council and brought the Democratic National Convention to Denver.